RSA has witnessed a huge uptick in targeted phishing email attacks in recent months, the company reports on its website.

“In Q2 alone, RSA identified more than 515,000 phishing attacks in the global market — a 115% rise over Q1 2016 and a remarkable 308% increase over the same time period last year,” writes Heidi Bleau. “The U.S. continued to be the most attacked country, with 48% of global phishing volume, as well as the top hosting country, hosting 60% of all global phishing attacks.  The total cost to global organizations from phishing: $9.1 billion.”

RSA describes a new fraud tutorial, called “Jungle Money,” found in an underground forum. The tutorial tells fraudsters how to create a network of private e-Wallet accounts that are converted through online store merchant services and funneled into a business class e-Wallet account. Following the instructions, a scammer can be protected from discovery by making it difficult to tie the different accounts to one another.

“The scheme includes creating a number of shell accounts via Virtual Credit Cards (VCC), as well as multiple shell e-Wallet accounts, and using them to ‘juggle’ funds between the accounts by charging one account against another for a purchase or service. They then quickly request a chargeback from one of the accounts, thereby receiving a full refund and quickly cashing out the funds,” according to the report.

Read the article and download the report.

A unanimous panel of the Sixth Circuit recently rejected a manufacturer’s attempt to compel arbitration under an expired contract in Linglong Americas, Inc. v. Horizon Tire, Inc., reports Butler Snow LLP.

Erin Palmer Polly explains that the manufacturer and its distributor entered into a collaboration agreement that contained an arbitration clause.

“The agreement expired and was not renewed, but the manufacturer and its distributor continued to work together and continued to make various representations of continued involvement,” she writes. “Approximately three years after the agreement expired, the parties’ relationship deteriorated and resulted in a federal court lawsuit.  The manufacturer attempted to compel arbitration and pointed to the arbitration provision in the collaboration agreement.”

She points to two important lessons to be learned from the case.

Read the article.

A series of security breaches that stuck prestigious law firms last year was more pervasive than reported and was carried out by people with ties to the Chinese government, according to evidence reported by Fortune.

In the cases studied by the magazine, hackers broke into BigLaw firm partners’ email accounts and passed messages from their victims’ in-boxes to outside servers.

“The evidence obtained by Fortune did not disclose a clear motive for the attack but did show the names of law firm partners targeted by the hackers,” writes reporter Jeff John Roberts. “The practice areas of those partners include mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property, suggesting the goal of the email theft may indeed have been economic in nature.”

Read the Fortune article.

Nick Szabo, the man widely credited with inventing the smart contract concept, says smart contracts will not rid the world of lawyers, despite the greatest efforts of blockchain innovators, reports CoinDesk.

Szabo gave the keynote address at the Smart Contracts Symposium at Microsoft’s New York headquarters.

Reporter Michael del Castillo quoted Szabo as saying, “Lawyers worried about losing their jobs to robots, you’re actually doing something that’s mostly complimentary to a smart contract. Smart contracts are mostly making possible new things that haven’t been done before.”

Read theCoinDesk article.

Cloud-based services and data services are creating new contract challenges for service providers— and their customers, write Glynna Christian and Molly Bright in an article posted on the website of Kaye Scholer.

“Many of these issues relate to the myriad changing pass-through terms required by a service provider’s own network of underlying agreements with the sub-providers of the services and data needed to make the service provider’s cloud-based services operate,” they write. “These agreements may include arrangements with cloud infrastructure providers, software providers and data providers that often require the service provider to ensure that its customers comply with acceptable use policies, limitations of liability, indemnification and intellectual property licensing or other content requirements.”

In some cases, a service provider can incorporate these terms into its customer agreements by embedding hyperlinks to these contract terms in its customer agreements.

Read the article.

eSignLive by VASCO and Insurance Networking News will present a complimentary webinar on how updated regulatory laws are allowing companies to improve the process of buying insurance for consumers, while ensuring security, compliance and enforceability, on Dec. 13, beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Intended to improve the process of buying insurance for consumers, there have been recent updates to laws that allow insurance companies to post policies, forms, and endorsements on a website rather than printing these documents on paper.

As you look to take advantage of this new regulatory environment, questions related to how this can be done in a compliant way will arise.

Webcast highlights:

• E-Posting and E-Delivery defined
• Update from PCIAA on the progress of legislative adoption of e-posting laws
• The intersection between ESIGN, UETA and state insurance laws on e-signatures and records
• How to demonstrate insured consent to do business electronically
• Best practices for ensuring security, compliance and enforceability
• A live demonstration of insurance policy electronic posting

Register for the webinar.

The Wall Street Journal is quoting a Trump transition official as saying that Debra Wong Yang, a former Los Angeles U.S. attorney with close ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, is under consideration for nomination as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yang, who was the top federal prosecutor in the central district of California from 2002 to 2006, met with President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday, report Dave Michaels and Sara Randazzo.

Trump has said he would try to roll back landmark financial regulations imposed by President Barack Obama’s administration. “But the choice of Ms. Yang might signal that a Trump administration would be more focused on continuing the Obama-era record of pursuing high-profile investigations of Wall Street,” they write.

Read the WSJ article.

While Wells Fargo’s new chief executive has responded to his company’s recent unauthorized-accounts scandal by saying his “immediate and highest priority is to restore trust in Wells Fargo,” the bank has been taking a different approach with individual customers, reports The New York Times.

“The bank has sought to kill lawsuits that its customers have filed over the creation of as many as two million sham accounts by moving the cases into private arbitration — a secretive legal process that often favors corporations,” write reporters Michael Corkery and Stacy Cowley.

Customers argue that they couldn’t have agreed to arbitration, considering they didn’t sign up for the accounts in the first place. The bank counters that the agreements in the customers’ original contracts also cover the disputed accounts.

Read the NYT article.

Transportation companies have become prime targets for patent infringement lawsuits in recent years, write Jonathan Todd and Justin P. Clark for Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.

“The best way a transportation and logistics provider can protect itself from the license fees, court costs, and damages is to carefully negotiate the technology agreements that support hardware and software license, lease, or development,” they explain.

In their article, they discuss technology contract tips, offering the most important user-favorable clauses that can often help protect the buyer or licensee of technology.

Read the article.

Stacey Lantagne uses a recent Florida case to illustrate the importance of specificity when drafting contracts.

Writing in her ContractsProf Blog, she outlines the history of Boardwalk at Daytona Development, LLC v. Paspalakis, “a case where the court, faced with an ambiguous description of the land at issue in a contract, just threw up its hands in frustration.”

The case involves a settlement agreement in a land dispute. The agreement failed to specify a legal description or street address for the property at issue. That failure came to light when Boardwalk conveyed a parcel — pursuant to the agreement — which the appellees found to be inferior to the one they expected to receive.

Read the article.

Business Insider summarizes the major findings of a new white paper by blockchain consortium R3 and global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright on smart contracts.

The white paper explores whether blockchain-based “smart contracts” are legally binding under current legislation in different countries.

The Business Insider article discusses the variety of possible smart contract models, the effect jurisdiction has on whether smart contracts are legally binding, the enforceability issues resulting from smart contracts’ underlying technology, and the importance of embedding dispute resolution mechanisms to reduce friction.

Read the Business Insider article.

Image by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine

A federal jury in Dallas ordered Johnson & Johnson and one of its subsidiaries to pay more than $1 billion in damages Thursday for “despicable and vile conduct” in selling Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip implants that they knew were seriously defective, reports The Dallas Morning News.

The New Jersey pharmaceutical and medical device maker and its DePuy Orthopaedics subsidiary must pay damages to six California plaintiffs who say they suffered serious chronic and painful medical problems caused by the device.

“The trial was the third in a series of bellwether cases being held by U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade,” reports Mark Curriden of Texas Lawbook for The Morning News. “More than 8,900 cases against Johnson & Johnson and DePuy have been filed across the U.S. The lawsuits have been consolidated in what is known as multi-district litigation.”

Read The Morning News article.

eSignLive by VASCO will present a complimentary webinar on the basics of using electronic signatures. The event will be Thursday, Dec. 8, beginning at 2 p.m. EST.

Electronic signatures are hardly a new, cutting-edge technology, eSignLive says on its website. Organizations of all sizes that are using esignatures have transformed the way they serve both internal staff and their customers and partners – offering a more convenient and efficient digital experience.

This presentation will provide an overview of the basic terminology, concepts, and laws related to electronic signatures and answer the most frequently asked questions on the topic including:

• What is the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature?
• How can you prove who e-signed?
• What legal and compliance requirements do we need to consider?
• What ROI metrics have others reported?
• What do signers need in order to e-sign?
• How do we get started? What’s the cost? What’s the effort?
• If you are just beginning to investigate e-signatures for your organization, or if you are new to an e-signature project team, join this discussion.

Register for the webinar.

As most legal departments’ workload increases and resources diminish, it’s no surprise that running an efficient legal department is challenging. Old processes tracked on Excel spreadsheets or rudimentary databases will no longer cut it. Many legal departments find themselves struggling under the weight of legacy technologies that simply do not work or are expensive to upgrade.

Onit has published an eBook (see the form below) that discusses how ELM solutions are positively impacting corporate legal departments like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), The Home Depot and Under Armour.

The eBook, available for free downloading, covers:

• Why ELM is more than just legal e-billing and spend management and “should” include contract management, legal holds, NDA creation, legal service requests, etc.
• Why “process automation” and collaboration is critical for performance
• Cues from the industry, market trends and Gartner’s predictions
• The new technology curve and future of legal operations technology

Download the eBook:

In his China Law Blog, Dan Harris writes that the dispute resolution provision in China contract may be the most important provision in the contract.

“If you put in a dispute resolution provision that makes sense, your Chinese company counter-party with whom you are contracting will be afraid to breach the contract. Conversely, if you put into the contract a dispute resolution provision that will not work, you are signaling to your Chinese company counter-party that it can breach its contract with you with impunity. Yes, it really is that important,” Harris writes in the blog post.

He explains why a provision calling for resolution in U.S. courts can sometimes be a hindrance, compared to a clause requiring dispute resolution to take place in Chinese courts.

Read the article.

Drafting an arbitration clause for an agreement may seem like a straightforward matter most of the time, writes Gilbert A. Samberg for Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo. It may even be as simple as incorporating by reference an arbitration provision in another document or agreement. Or is it?

In the article, he discusses a recent federal district court ruling, Cooperativa Agraria Industrial Naranjillo Ltda. v. Transmar Commodity Group, Ltd., that may offer a cautionary lesson  before making such assumptions.

“In Naranjillo, the decisive principle was that an offeree cannot assent to an offer unless the offeree knows of its existence. The Court found that there had been no showing that Naranjillo actually knew of the existence of the arbitration clause terms,” Samberg explains.

Read the article.

When putting together a contract for the first time, many business owners may turn to standard form contracts to make agreements between customers, vendors, and other businesses, writes Corey F. Schechter of Butterfield Schechter LLP.

“Calling these contracts ‘standard’ may make it seem like they will protect your interests and provide for any contingencies that arise,” he explains. “However, many businesses find that a standard form contract ends up hurting their business.”

Because a form contract is designed to cover all bases, it may avoid language that is specific to a particular type of business, according to the article.

“Not only do these vague business contracts fail to address important issues that may arise between the two parties, they may also lead to confusion over what terms will actually govern the agreement,” Schechter writes.

Read the article.

Image by Ron Cogswell

As the top lawyer for the Chicago Cubs, Lydia Wahlke spends most of her time protecting and enforcing the team’s brand, but she still gets to be a fan of the new World Series champions, according to an interview published in Bloomberg’s Big Law Business.

She spent four years at Miramax Films as a video editor and field producer before deciding to take the LSAT on a whim. That led to law school and then being hired as a litigation associate at Kirkland & Ellis in her home town of Chicago. Then in 2010 she joined the Cubs organization.

“One of the greatest challenges we have is also one of our greatest assets: our brand,” she told Bloomberg’s Casey Sullivan. “We have needed to find the right path to protecting and enforcing our brand, while allowing our fans to celebrate being fans and celebrate their love of the team. That can be challenging because we are 146 years old and it’s a really complex brand that has come about in many ways, including organically from fans celebrating the team. You have to find that dividing line between fighting people and protecting your licenses and protecting your brand long-term, but you don’t want to take the fun out of it. That can be deciding whether or not to enforce our mark.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

Blockchain consortium R3 has contracted global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright to determine the contractual effect and enforceability of smart contracts, reports Finextra.

The issue is whether, or in what circumstances, smart contacts have legally binding contractual effect, are enforceable and whether disputes arising from smart contracts can be resolved by an automated resolution process built into a smart contract.

The Finextra report quotes Todd McDonald, co-founder and COO of R3: “The past few years have seen a great deal of talk about distributed ledger technologies given the profound impact they will have on the future of financial services. In order to fully realise the benefits of the technology, it is essential that we design smart contracts that are legally enforceable. Working with our partners at Norton Rose Fulbright, we’re exploring various ways to ensure smart contracts meet that threshold.”

Read the article.

Lack of precision in reinsurance contract wording has been known to engender anomalous results, points out Larry P. Schiffer in Squire Patton Boggs’ Insurance and Reinsurance Disputes Blog.

“Often a single word or phrase can cause a court or arbitrator to construe an agreement in ways unintended. In reinsurance arbitrations, when the panel majority decides how a contract operates based on its construction of a word or phrase, the losing party is likely stuck with that result even if a court might have construed the contract differently,” he writes.

He describes a recent case that illustrates his point that legalese and unnecessary words can cause a trier of fact to interpret a clause in a way that is unexpected.

Read the article.